Infusing Mysticism into the Holidays

In between the hours of gift buying and cookie making there is a pause.

Can you feel it?

Between the time spent navigating family politics and trying to get the tree to stand straight in its stand there is a stream of quietude that runs just beneath the surface.

Can you hear it?

Across the world this time has been marked in sacred observance. With monoliths of stone and underground caves, geometric earthworks that all align to the same mystical compass — The Winter Solstice. For thousands of years people have built structures to memorialize the power of this event, the longest night of the year before the return of the light.

To this day we can still watch the dawn flood the underground chambers of Ireland’s Newgrange, the grass-topped temple built over 5,000 years in the past. Or witness the first rays of Solstice light run down the center of the Eqypt’s carefully calculated Temple of Karnak. The lightlines of the Winter’s Solstice still run throughout our lives, with its earth deep promise of rebirth and renewal.

Winter Solstice at Stone Henge

Today, however, we are called to observe and invoke the stirring magic of this time in perhaps the most profound temple of all – our own selves.

It is easy to tap into the mysticism of this season when sitting in front of a candlelit cathedral or watching the stars wheel like a choir across a pristine sky. It is much harder to feel into the ancient magic of this time when we are in the full-on hustle that is the carpooling, present wrapping, event planning and people pleasing that seems to define our cultural celebration of the season.

The complexities of this time can feel scattering, but this is also their gift. For many of us there may be no central sanctuary (tradition, or church, or otherwise) in which we place our belief during the holiday time, and so we hear the call to become a temple unto ourself. A place in which light is anchored, tended, given as much celebration as the first ray of sun at the temple of Karnak. With each complex fractal of modern life the light becomes, not broken, but multifarious, proliferate. A flame scattered amongst many hearths. An ancient flicker of hope and renewal that we each tend in our turn.

Solstice Sunrise at Newgrange

And so this video blog below is about tending that flicker, that inner light. Because no matter what tradition we come from, we can all tap into the magic of this time to re-infuse the holiday season with mysticism, meaning and life. Whether it’s with earth magic elixirs or rituals of reconnecting with the natural rhythms of light and dark— it is within our power to reignite our ancestral connection to this time.

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1 thought on “Infusing Mysticism into the Holidays”

I couldn’t agree more. The magice of Christmas comes from within – what we make of it, our thoughts, intentions, beliefs – and rituals. I use many of the things suggested in this post to make it a special time and work very hard not to get caught up in the commercialisation of it.